here over the rim of the sea,
I was back in a narrow street,
Where amber faces pass all day,
Going to pay, going to pray,
Going the same old human way
They have gone for a thousand years, men say,
In K'u-Kiang.

And I heard the coolie cry for his fare,
I heard the merchant praise his ware
Of bronze and porcelain set to snare,
In K'u-Kiang!
I saw strange streaming signs in black
With gold and crimson on their back--
Opiate signs in an opiate street;
Where the slip and patter of felt-shod feet
Is old as the sun;
And the temple door
As cool and dark as the night.

And where dim lanterns, swinging there,
As a lure to human grief and care,
Half reveal and half conceal
The ancestral gloom of the gods.

I saw all this with sudden pang,
As if by hashish swept or bhang,
Because the sun, like a Chinese lantern,
Set in a temple of clouds!

TYPHOON

(_At Hong-kong_)

I was weary and slept on the Peak;
The air clung close like a shroud,
And ever the blue-fly at my ear
Buzzed haunting, hot and loud;
I awoke and the sky was dun
With awe and a dread that soon
Went shuddering thro my heart, for I knew
That it meant typhoon! typhoon!

In the harbour below, far down,
The junks like fowl in a flock
Were tossing in wingless terror, or fled
Fluttering in from the shock.
The city, a breathless bend
Of roofs, by the water strewn,
Lay silent and waiting, yet there was none
Within it but said typhoon!

Then it came, like a million winds
Gone mad immeasurably,
A torrid and tortuous tempest stung
By rape of the fair South Sea.
And it swept like a scud escaped
From crater of sun or moon,
And struck as no power of Heaven could,
Or of Hell--typhoon! typhoon!

And the junks were smitten and torn,
The drowning struggled and cried,
Or, dashed on the granite walls of the sea,
In succourless hundreds died.
Till I shut the sight from my eyes
And prayed for my soul to swoon:
If ever I see God's face, let it
Be guiltless of that typhoon!

PENANG

I want to go back to Singapore
And ship along the Straits,
To a bungalow I know beside Penang;
Where cocoanut palms along the shore
Are waving, and the gates
Of Peace shut